NDLI: The Structure of Causal Evidence Based on Eliminative Induction

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Pietsch, Wolfgang
Copyright Year	2014
Abstract	It is argued that in deterministic contexts evidence for causal relations states whether a boundary condition makes a difference or not to a phenomenon. In order to substantiate the analysis, I show that this difference/indifference making is the basic type of evidence required for eliminative induction in the tradition of Francis Bacon and John Stuart Mill. To this purpose, an account of eliminative induction is proposed with two distinguishing features: it includes a method to establish the causal irrelevance of boundary conditions by means of indifference making, which is called strict method of agreement, and it introduces the notion of a background against which causal statements are evaluated. Causal statements thus become three-place-relations postulating the relevance or irrelevance of a circumstance C to the examined phenomenon P with respect to a background B of further conditions. To underline the importance of evidence in terms of difference/indifference making, I sketch two areas, in which eliminative induction is extensively used in natural and engineering sciences. One concerns exploratory experiments, the other engineering design methods. Given that a method is discussed that has been used for centuries, I make no claims to novelty in this paper, but hope that the combined discussion of several topics that are still somewhat underrepresented in the philosophy of science literature is of some merit.
Starting Page	421
Ending Page	435
Page Count	15
File Format	PDF
ISSN	01677411
Journal	Topoi
Volume Number	33
Issue Number	2
e-ISSN	15728749
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2014-02-23
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Causality Evidence Eliminative induction Method of difference Exploratory experimentation Engineering design Philosophy Philosophy of Science Philosophy of Technology
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Philosophy

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